Evaluation checklist

38 questions to ask
every vendor, including us.

Written by a vendor, which you should hold against it. It includes the questions we currently answer badly, because a checklist you cannot use against us is not worth taking into a meeting. Our own answers are marked throughout.

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Encrypted at rest and in transit Australian data residency Hosted on AWS No lock-in contracts Guided setup available Your data exportable on request

Last reviewed

What should an Australian law firm ask when choosing practice management software?

Ask what the export actually contains, whether trust ledger history migrates at transaction level, where AI processing runs as distinct from where files are stored, the total first-year cost including migration and training, and who owns the vendor. The last one is how firms end up on a platform that is later retired.

Data and migration

The single biggest source of unpleasant surprises, and the area where vendor answers differ most while the marketing sounds identical.

  • Does our trust ledger history come across at transaction level, or only opening balances?
  • What does your export contain, and what does it not contain? Ask for that in writing.
  • Do documents keep their association with the matter they belong to?
  • Do closed and archived matters migrate, or only open ones?
  • What happens to our precedents and document templates, and who rebuilds them?
  • Does unbilled work in progress come across?
  • Can we run both systems in parallel, and for how long?
  • Who performs the migration, and what is the fallback if it slips?

Our answer

MatterFirst imports contacts, matters, documents, time entries, invoices, billing codes and leads from CSV, with a staged review before anything commits. Historical trust ledger import is in active development and has not shipped. Precedents are rebuilt rather than migrated, as with every vendor we know of.

Trust accounting and compliance

Regulated records with a retention obligation that outlives your software. The obligation follows the records, not the system holding them.

  • Is trust accounting included in the base price or is it a higher tier?
  • Which Australian jurisdictions is the trust accounting built for?
  • What will our external examiner accept for the years held in the old system?
  • Can we produce a reconciliation report an examiner will accept?
  • How long are trust records retained, and can we export them at any time?
  • What happens to compliance updates if the product is discontinued?

Our answer

Trust accounts, transactions and reconciliation are included on every plan, not gated behind a tier. Under the Legal Profession Uniform Law trust records must be kept seven years past the later of the last transaction or the matter finalising, and that obligation is yours regardless of vendor. Ask your examiner what they will accept before choosing anything.

Data residency and security

Where files are stored and where AI inference runs are different questions. The second is the one usually left unanswered.

  • Which country and region holds our data, and is that the default or something we request?
  • Where does AI processing run? Are documents sent to another region to be analysed?
  • Do you hold a completed SOC 2 Type II report or ISO 27001 certification? Ask to see it.
  • Who inside your company can access our matter data, and is that access logged?
  • What happens to our data if we leave, and in what format?
  • Where are backups held?

Our answer

Data and AI processing both stay in the AWS region the firm chooses, Sydney by default. MatterFirst does not hold a SOC 2 Type II report or ISO 27001 certification. If your procurement requires a completed audit, we do not meet that bar today.

Total cost, not licence cost

The licence is the easy number and rarely the largest one. Ask for a single figure covering everything before go-live.

  • What is the total first-year cost including migration, configuration, training and any parallel run?
  • Is pricing per user or per workspace, and what happens when we hire?
  • What is the contract term, and what does leaving early cost?
  • Which features are add-ons rather than included?
  • What are the annual price increases, and are they capped?
  • Are there per-document, per-matter or per-transaction charges?

Our answer

Per workspace from $149 per month with users included, rather than per seat. No multi-year lock-in. Document AI is metered as a monthly credit allowance per plan, which is a real cost to check against your document volume.

Fit for how you actually work

Every platform demos well. The question is what happens on your third-busiest matter type in month four.

  • Can we see the product run one of our own matter types end to end, not a canned demo?
  • Who configures a new workflow, us or you, and what does a change cost later?
  • How long until a new staff member is productive?
  • Which of our current integrations survive the move?
  • What does support look like, in which timezone, and what is the response commitment?
  • Can you name a firm of our size and practice area that we can speak to?

Our answer

Workflows are drawn in a visual builder that a practice manager can maintain without a consultant. Native connections are Xero, Stripe, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace; PEXA and InfoTrack are set up with us. We cannot yet name a reference firm, which is a fair thing to weigh against us.

The vendor itself

Actionstep acquired FilePro and LawMaster and is retiring both. Firms on those platforms did not choose that, and the questions below are the ones that would have surfaced the risk earlier.

  • Who owns this company, and has it been acquired?
  • Is this product actively developed, or is it in maintenance while attention goes elsewhere?
  • If it were discontinued, what notice period would we get?
  • How many Australian firms use it, and how many are our size?
  • Where is support based, and has that changed recently?
  • What has shipped in the last twelve months?

Our answer

MatterFirst is built by NorthCape Technology, an Australian company, and has not been acquired. We are a young product, which cuts both ways: active development, and no long track record. Ask us both questions.

MatterFirst is a legal practice management platform for Australian law firms, built by NorthCape Technology, covering matters, documents, trust accounting, billing and a client portal, with data hosted in the AWS region the firm chooses.

This checklist suits any Australian firm selecting or replacing practice management software, whether or not MatterFirst is on the list. It is less useful if you have already signed, where only the migration section still applies.

Take it to every vendor on your list.

Including us. If our answers do not hold up when you ask them directly, we would rather you found that out now.

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